It’s not fair.

I’m the older brother in the prodigal son parable, the Pharisee.

I’m the older brother in my family.

When I was a kid, dad would say to me, “Your sister doesn’t want to be in heaven if you’re there.” She would get the smile. I would get the sneer.

I believed that Jesus, like my dad, favored his younger. Notice the contrast in how the father treated each:

It was clear that the father loved his younger son. But did Jesus love his older son? Does he love me?

Bailey showed me that the parable was specifically told to the Pharisees, the older son. Of the eight times the word “son” appears in the parable, teknon is used only once. Teknon is the Greek word for son that embodies tenderness. It’s the same word Mary called Jesus when she found him at the temple — after three days of searching. The father intentionally called his older son teknon at the exact moment the older son was angriest with him.¹

In contrast, dad pressed exactly where it hurt, and it was no accident — “your sister just has a better way with words.”

To my mind, Jesus played favorites. But at least He wasn’t murderous like God, who commanded that stubborn and rebellious sons must be stoned in the Old Testament.

In church, I’d show this passage to anyone who’d look. I remember this 70-ish old lady came up to me. She reached for my hands — I recoiled, embarrassed by my sweaty hands. She reached again, and she firmly held my hands. “You just gotta have faith.” I appreciated her warm words, but God was cold.

Years later, I dug deeper into this passage. Bible scholars were trying to comfort their readers: In all of Jewish recorded history, that command was never carried out. In fact, rabbis recoiled from the thought of stoning their own children. Over time, they surrounded that law with so many conditions that it became impossible to apply — until they finally concluded:

“There never was and never will be a stubborn and rebellious son.” — Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 71a

To my mind, if anything, this showed that rabbis were more loving than God. The rabbis’ rules rescued their wayward sons from a wrathful God.

I don’t know why it took me so long to connect God’s Deuteronomy 21 command with Jesus’ Luke 15 parable. I do remember, however, how it happened. I inserted “prodigal” for each occurrence of “son” in Deuteronomy 21:18–21. It was a match! The prodigal definition was the same in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Yet — Jesus taught the opposite of what’s commanded in the Old Testament.

Finally, this gave me a chance to answer my core question, “Can I trust both God and Jesus?”

If Jesus is the mirror image of God, and the two views of God and Jesus are the complete opposite — something had to give. It was my make-or-break moment.

I was open — even hoping — to change my picture of God/Jesus.

Here’s what I found.

→ Prodigal Insights